Team to hunt Zambia Watchdog

The government has put together a team of senior officials to hunt down people operating Zambian Watchdog.

This team is led by Deputy Inspector of Police Solomon Jere. Others in the team are DEC director Alita Mbavwe, Xavior Chungu, Director of Technical Service of special division (OP), a Director at ministry of Transport a Mr Soko, ZICTA director Margaret Chalwe and Sydney Mupeta the chief technical officer at ZAMTEL. There are other junior officers. We shall tell you more about each and every member of this team in a while.

We hear a budget of K4 million (K4 billion unrebased) has been set aside. Some people are luck. All that money and yet we all know in the end nothing will be achieved. But these guys will buy plots and new cars. As for Solmon Jere, he will have more money to take recruits to that lodge.

But why the sudden desperation? What do they hope to achieve now which they failed to when they attempted last year in July?

‘It shows how desperate the government has became. Nothing is working, the president is sick’, our contacts in the system explain.

‘There are certain decisions that the government would want to make but they fear that the Watchdog will as usual rally opposition. For example, the president is willing and ready to appoint his son Mulenga as Republican vice-president so that if he dies, Mulenga will be in charge, but, the Watchdog has to go first,’ insists our contacts.

Our sources say nothing in this world annoys Sata more than the Zambian Watchdog. Our sources say that if the people running the watchdog were caught, Sata will hold a press conference and will then personally take part in torturing.

The president has therefore, once again, maybe for the 20th time from the time he became president ordered that the Watchdog should be destroyed.

But the Watchdog thinks that Sata is just wasting his time and public money.

Last year, the government hired Huawei, a Chinese company to block the Watchdog from Zambia. We are reliably informed that over K91 billion (unrebased) has been spent on the project so far. But, to the frustration of government, people continued accessing the website using proxy websites.

Infact statistics show that the number of people who read the Watchdog doubled during the period of the attacks. We are told and know that among junior police officers, the Watchdog is as popular as a promotion. But then, why do you think they give us information?

But more annoying was the fact that a Facebook page in the name of the Watchdog was created and became an instant hit. Some people have argued that the Facebook page is even more lethal than the main website. So the blocking of the website served no purpose except to enrich Huawei and people like Amos Malupenga to brought the spy company. Huawei is in Zambia to make money. So if they find foolish Africans who are willing to pay K90 billion to put a fake wall on a website, why should they care? They are getting the money and build their yellow children houses back home.

Probably realizing that blocking the website is not serving any purpose, they have now removed the blocking machines. But at what cost to tax payers?

What readers do not know is that Huawei and government officials have tried ruthlessly to bring down this facebook page. They have written to Facebook itself demanding that the page be taken down, but all in vain.

Now that the blocking has failed, it is time to go for the people.

But then, even this has been tried before. Last time when Sata gave the order, the police arrested some innocent people they thought were running the Watchdog. When they could not find evidence and facing local and international condemnation, they decided to charge those people with possession of pornography.

So what will they do different this time? Well, they will probably find some more innocent people to harass and persecute just to please Sata and show that they are doing something. With K4 billion, obviously they have to show him something or the sick man may just die of disappointment.

Chipuba Mukanga hinted that the PF regime is engaging some countries that he believes are hosting people running the Watchdog. Lets assume the people operating this website are staying in Europe or USA or Cambodia.

Can the Zambian government manage to extradite them? We think it would be another waste of money. Is it not the same PF government that failed to extradite Henry Banda from South Africa which is only 2 hours flight away? They accused Henry of financial crimes and from what we know; it is easy to extradite people accused of such crimes.

Now, if you failed to extradite someone in South Africa whom you accused of financial crimes, can you extradite from Europe or USA a journalist you accuse of insulting your sick president? We are not aware of any country in the world that has ever surrendered a journalist facing such foolish charges. In fact, even USA and UK have in the recent past failed to extradite journalists.

Imagine one fool appears in USA and says my name is constable Kapoli, I have come to arrest a Zambian journalist who is hiding here because he has insulted the Zambian president?

In any case, most countries do not recognize the so called ‘insult laws’.

The current Zambian government has a very bad image outside. Like we have said before, even other presidents have been shunning Zambian from the time Sata became president. Only Robert Mugabe has been in Zambia from the time Sata became president. Even he has stopped now. The USA Human Rights Report has from the time Sata became president being showing a gloomy picture. Just last week, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that Zambia was one of the worst violators of media freedom in 2013.

That is why Zambia cannot even borrow money from credible lenders but is now getting kaloba called Euro bond.

Luckily, most people know the difference between Zambia and the PF regime. The PF is a temporally and passing thing that will expire. But Zambia is here forever. Most people outside respect and admire Zambians and the country itself. But many people despise the current Zambian government.

But anyway, when people are desperate, you expect nothing sensible from them.

To say that we are insulting Sata and his fellow PF goons is not true. If you want to see insults, go to Sata’s own facebook and see how people tell him off.

We have said before that the type of journalism we practice here is specifically tailored for dictators.

As far as we know, PF does not represent Zambia; it represents Sata’s family and their financial ticks.

As long as PF remains a Sata family, the Watchdog will be here to point out what is going on.

We are practicing guerrilla journalism. We are everywhere, in the mountains, on rooftops and streets throwing stones.

Even if you were to catch one, be assured that the Watchdog will not stop. The Watchdog will outlive PF; that is a promise.